Download Presentation - Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

Scale the Universe
Exploring your Universe from
Inner to Outer Space
Presented by: Sarah Silva and Phil Plait
NASA Education and Public Outreach
Sonoma State University
The NASA E/PO Program at
Sonoma State University
• A group of eight people working collaboratively
to educate the public about current and future
NASA high energy astrophysics/astronomy
missions.
Swift
• Led by Prof. Lynn Cominsky
GLAST
XMM-Newton
What is GLAST?
• GLAST: Gamma-Ray Large Area
Space Telescope
• Planned for launch in 2007
• GLAST has two instruments:
– Large Area Telescope (LAT)
– GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM)
• GLAST will look at many different
objects within the energy range of
10keV to 300GeV.
LAT
GBM
Smallest to Largest
• Name the smallest things that you
can think of…
• What are some of the largest
things you can think of?
• What about the most distant
object?
Distance Tabs
• On your desk there should be one or more
pieces of paper with masking tape on them.
• In groups - place these in order on the brown
paper.
• The left hand side of the paper should have
the small scale items and the right hand side
of the paper should have the large scale
items.
Well Known Objects…
• What was the most interesting thing that
you found while lining up the distance
tabs?
• Going back to our original list of small and
large objects…
– Is there anything on this list that wasn’t
mentioned in the tabs?
Earth and Moon System
• At your desk there should be precut moon
rulers.
• Assemble them with the tape located on
the tables.
• Using the moon rulers answer the
questions on the two activity sheets.
• NOTE: For the second activity substitute
the moon ball (golf ball) for the paper
plate.
The Universe is a VERY Big Place
At least 13 billion light-years
(or about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers)
It is full of VERY big numbers!
And small!
Scientific Notation and tens
10000 = 1x 104
1000= 1x 103
100 = 1x 102
10 = 1x 101
1 = 1x 100
0.1 = 1x 10-1
0.01 = 1x 10-2
0.001 = 1x 10-3
0.0001 = 1x 10-4
How this works:
The Booklet
• This book is organized into 3-stand-alone sections:
– A:
•
•
– B:
•
•
– C:
•
•
•
•
•
A1: Orders of Magnitude
A2: Unit Analysis
B1: Ordering Distance – Sticky (what we just did!) and Cutout
B2: Using a Log Scale
C1: Scale the Universe (1)
C2: Scale the Universe (2)
C3: Scale the Universe (3)
C4: Proportional Thinking
C5: Ordering Time
Brainstorm Time
• How can we use this in our science
classroom?
– Biology Lessons
– Astronomy Lessons
– Introductions to scientific notation
– ….
Resources
• GLAST Education and Public Mission
Website
– http://glast.sonoma.edu
• Downloadable materials for this book
(AND MORE):
– http://glast.sonoma.edu/teachers/teachers.html
• More Great materials from TOPS:
– http://topscience.org/